


Simple Promises

by icarus_chained



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alcohol, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hugs, Promises, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-14
Updated: 2012-11-14
Packaged: 2017-11-18 15:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/562331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony and a drunk, hurting James Rhodes. Friendship is the hardest thing in the world. But also the simplest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Simple Promises

Tony came home to find Rhodey on his couch, down in the lab. Which would have been fine, except Rhodey was also incredibly _drunk_ on his couch, which usually didn't happen unless Tony had been there to feed him the alcohol. Tony could count the times he'd found Rhodey drunk without his assistance on one hand.

And ... none of them had been fun times. Not a one.

"Hey," he said, softly. Dropping off his tablet on the first mostly horizontal surface he found, patting a worried Dummy on the head in passing. _It's okay, buddy. I got him_. "Did you bully Dummy into breaking out my stash?"

Rhodey raised his head. His eyes were slightly bloodshot, and very, very dry. Tony shifted carefully, trying not to let his alarm show. "What?" Rhodey asked. Carefully. Precisely. Looking between Tony and the robot whirring worriedly behind him, bobbing his head in sympathetic agitation. Dummy always did like Rhodey. Pretty mutual, too. "No," Rhodey said, with a touch of affront. "He's just ... been looking out for me. Is all."

Tony felt his mouth quirk, mostly involuntarily, and padded forward to drop down beside his friend. "He plays favourites," he agreed, with a fake frown just for show. "You get love and affection and access to my alcohol, and I get fire extinguishers and abuse." He shook his head. "Parenthood is no fun, I'm telling you."

Rhodey blinked carefully at him. Long and slow, and there was something Tony recognised behind it, that stretched, aching thing in his eyes that meant if he'd a single drop of moisture left that the alcohol hadn't dried up, he'd be crying. Which was why, of course, he'd drunk enough that that wouldn't be an issue.

"You remember MIT?" Rhodey asked. Out of nowhere, maybe, but Tony could follow that logic-tree, could bounce from drink to pain to Dummy to that place between them, that place they'd both come through. Tony followed that one. "You remember when I used to be panicking about grades, and you could barely remember what day followed what, and we could scare half the campus between us if we wanted to, and it all seemed so hard, but it was _so much easier_?" A weird little hitch, pain. "Simpler, anyway. When you ... remember it."

Tony blinked rapidly. Wondered about getting some alcohol himself, something to dry him out just enough, in whatever Rhodey'd left of his stash. He didn't know what this was. Or not specifically, anyway, didn't know what had happened to bounce Rhodey to that place. But then ... then maybe he didn't need to.

"We could go magnetise the lock on Pepper's office door, if you want," he offered, and managed a grin when Rhodey stared at him. Something almost, but not quite, like the old one, from way back when. "I mean, it's not Lab 4, but she's the closest you're going to get to absolute authority around here." He smiled, soft and dark. "Well, or me. If you wanted to fuck the establishment, get our noses dirty and show them what for." He laughed, a little, at the blind startlement in Rhodey's eyes. "Hey, you want simple, yeah? Nothing simpler than that. I fuck the establishment all the time, and I haven't been a student in ... Well. Lets not go there."

Rhodey blinked. Trying to catch up, the drunk making him sluggish. Smiling crookedly when he got there. "Yeah," he rasped, leaning over to nudge Tony's shoulder. "But you're you. Nobody ever made rules for you."

Tony's grin flickered, flashed empty for a second. He let it. Rhodey let it, with the pain and the drunk and the logic tree they both recognised. "Yeah they did," Tony said, quietly. "They do. All the damn time." He grinned, soft and queasy. "And you know what? It may be harder now, but still. _Still_. Fuck them anyway, you know? Just because it's hard, doesn't mean it can't be simple."

Rhodey closed his eyes. Closed them, and they were damp, Tony caught the damp in the glow of the reactor, because somehow the drunk just wasn't ever good enough, was it?

"I really wish that was true, sometimes," Rhodey whispered, to Tony or maybe the backs of his eyelids, leaning back beside Tony in the half-light of the lab, and the one place they were always safe. The both of them, so long as it was only them.

"It is," Tony promised him, rough and ragged. It was, it would be, he would make it be. What the fuck was the point of being Tony Stark, if you couldn't make the world that little simpler for a friend? "Show me where the lock is, James, and I'll make it be simple for you. I promise."

And Rhodey's face twisted, something that was either a smile or a twist of pain, maybe both, and he reached blindly up to catch Tony by the neck, soft and rough, and pull him down. Tony went, curled sideways half beside and half on top of him, and let Rhodey pull his head into the hollow of his shoulder, and hide the reactor against his chest.

"Yeah," Rhodey whispered, and he didn't mean it, not really, they both knew Rhodey wasn't ever going to believe it could be simple, but he let the promise stand. He let Tony try, because Rhodey was good like that, and always had been. "Yeah, Tony. I know." A smile, and a rough, aching kiss across Tony's forehead, while Tony fisted hands in his shirt, and silently made his promise that more vehement. "I know," Rhodey said, and maybe, just a little, he wanted to mean it. And maybe, just maybe, that was good enough.

The world wasn't simple. Hadn't been simple in such a long fucking time. But friendship ... that was hard, the hardest thing ever, but it was, in the end, also the simplest. Tony listened to Rhodey's heart thump solidly under his cheek, and he knew that.

Friendship was a promise you wanted to keep. Even if it cost everything you had. And there was nothing simpler in all the world than that.


End file.
